Evangelos Venizelos

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras ound the going tough over the weekend as he failed to convince all members of his coalition that additional austerity measures must be enacted to obtain the next tranche of rescue funding.

By Thursday Greece must win over the rest of the participants to exchange new bonds for old, or it will invoke collective action clauses to compel additional bondholders to participate. The target is to reduce the country’s privately held debt of 206 billion euros ($270 billion) by 53.5%.